By emotional intimacy. I mean that he wants to make love to me, the whole person body and soul. Not just my physical parts. It is the intention behind his attraction to me. He has a great body but that is not why I want to be intimate with him. It is because I truly love who he is and I want to be closer to him in every way possible. I know he loves who I am but for him it is a contradictory feeling because he associates sex with taking pleasure from someone he is physically attracted to and that is it. He says he does not like objectifying me like that so he is held back from enjoying sex fully. He also stresses the importance of working out which I do and enjoy doing. But I worry about when I get pregnant and older if he will still be attracted to me if we don’t have a deeper connection in the bedroom.
Okay, the red part above is, I think, the most important part of your post. Your husband has been very well-educated in the secular attitude about sex. You both are learning a new paradigm, and it takes effort and time. The good news is, your husband feels the disconnect, so hopefully, he will be willing to work on it. Basically, he needs to allow himself to open up to the feelings that actually ARE behind his attraction to you, and not let the secular objectification of you he has learned get in the way of that. Also, if he focuses more on pleasuring you, and getting satisfaction from that, he will feel less like he is using you. Trust me, guys are so much easier to “get there” so he will not miss out on his own pleasure. But if it becomes less of a focus for him, if he practices sexuality as a
service instead of just a function, he will get more in touch with the sacramental side of marital sex. I second the recommendation of Christopher West’s work. Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is a beautiful statement of how we as Catholics should regard the gift of our bodies and how they should be used, and Mr. West helps make it easy for laypeople to understand it.
The blue part above shows the consequences of the secular attitude about sex. Even married women now have to worry about keeping to a shallow culture’s definition of attractive and beautiful, and fear they will be abandoned if they do not. Even women in happy marriages with men who really love them. Men face absolutely no social ramifications for abandoning perfectly good wives who love them and have mothered their children, thanks to the disgusting secular attitudes that prevail about sex, marriage, and desirability. Women must fear, if not constantly, then at least often, abandonment, even when they have done nothing to deserve it. Your husband needs to re-learn some things in this area, too. And it’s not really his fault…he has learned from his culture. But, the choice he makes now is entirely his responsibility. Tell him that you see his reminders to work out as a veiled threat sometimes, like, “if you don’t stay thin I won’t love you or want you.” If he is encouraging working out so that you preserve your health and because he wants to make sure you are there for him to grow old with, that is good. If he is “encouraging” working out because he can’t stand the thought of you being fat, even if you have a good reason, like having recently had a child, that is not good. And trust me, once you have had children, your body will NOT look the same no matter how much you work out, unless you are extremely lucky. It won’t necessarily be bad, just different. But if the man who fathered the children, and knows exactly why your body looks the way it does, punishes you for that…well, let’s just say that speaks a lot about his character. I’m not saying anyone should just let themselves go, and get grossly and unhealthfully fat, but concessions need to be made to the realities of childbearing and aging. Loving spouses in a sacramental marriage realize they are in this together for LIFE, and that there are seasons and changes and you ride them out together.
I also don’t have a degree in psychology, so here goes…
, but my husband and I talk a lot during sex, to let each other know what we like (physically and emotionally).
You can put mine right next to yours.